Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday July 11, 2012 @02:40PM
from the think-of-the-children dept.

Barence writes "A British ISP is inviting religious groups to help set parental controls for its customers. Claranet says it is recruiting volunteer 'Guardians' from a number of different organizations — including religious organizations, schools and child safety experts. A press spokesman for the ISP said that an 'Islamic advisor' was among the first batch of Guardians, but refused to identify them. The Claranet Guardians will be asked to choose whether they think 140 different categories of internet content are appropriate. Within those categories, the Guardians can choose to add or remove individual websites from the blacklists, which are created by a third-party company that Claranet also refused to name."

Religious groups can go and fuck themselves, I've had enough of superstitious groups trying to change the world to their liking, really it's too much. if some idiot needs to censor what he sees, install dans guardian or similar. geeze, leave the net alone

Come now, a moment of sane thought please. It's one ISP in Britain, it's not massive censorship. I'm sure that this company has a selling point to consumers that they do just this sort of thing, so members knowingly choose this ISP to help manage content without them having to worry about monitoring nearly as much at home.

If a US company started (and they have by the way) which has a set of rules you don't like you change ISP companies right? I'm guessing that they have the same ability to change ISPs in the UK.

This is not as you say "changing the world" and there is no need to "leave the net alone" since they are not touching the net! They are creating a service very similar to Cyber Sitter or Net Nanny which used to be US companies (and maybe still are) that block content because customers pay them to.

ISPs in the US do the same thing as this company. The difference is really that it's harder to do this for Religion than it is to "save the children" in the US. Same thing in reality, both add additional controls and content filtering.

I know it's hard for people that have been around a while to remember, but back in the day we had AOL and Prodigy which were the same exact thing also. Content was filtered based on their rules. Most of us now days don't use this tier of service

There are 2 sides to this IMO, first off I don't consider this top down censorship, because it sounds like an optional service, not a requirement for an ISP. Now yes if it is a requirement, IE you cannot use the ISP without having the filter, or it gets legislated that if you have kids in the house, you must have parental controls turned on, then it becomes censorship. Personally I do have a few dislikes of the idea, namely that if religious groups are going with it, you are bound to have some blatant block

By that logic there should be no drinking age and most surely pornography should be able to be printed anywhere. There should be no movie rating system, lyrics rating system, or game rating system. Do you see that you have crossed well beyond the realm of common sense.

Customers _pay_for_this service, it is not mandatory for _anyone_ to use the service.

The reason this was brought up as a/. article was to create traffic based on the atheist zealots that come out of the wood work spewing hate on anything Religious for any reason.

I doubt that you understand what that means for you and your comment, but I do feel an obligation to point it out.

By that logic there should be no drinking age and most surely pornography should be able to be printed anywhere. There should be no movie rating system, lyrics rating system, or game rating system. Do you see that you have crossed well beyond the realm of common sense.

Perhaps we ought to move beyond the realm of common sense, and into the realm of hard data? Where is the actual data demonstrating that each of those policies has a beneficial result? If you don't have any, why should I trust your "common se

You are so far out of context it's alarming. If someone CHOOSES TO PAY FOR THIS SERVICE why the hell do you care? Mind your own business and let them do their thing, as long as they are not making you do the same thing. As you would tell Religious people to stay out of your business, you need to stay out of theirs! That is how we all get along.

As to your last comment, you do realize that abstinence and self control is proven to be the best birth control one could use right? I'd rather teach my kid to h

The danger is that these religious groups will censor things like information on contraception which as a society we feel should be available to everyone. Everyone, children included, have a right to information on things like sexual health and dealing with being a homosexual in a potentially hostile environment. In other words there should be oversight and limits on censorship, and account taken of people's rights.

BTW, that sort of information is available at the local library, but obviously you have to go

Is it censorship when it is voluntary? Are everyone who choose not to buy the latest issue of Penthouse practicing self-censorship? Should they stop, and buy the damn porn rag in the name of free speech? Or are you just wrong?

Everyone in the UK has the choice to switch, especially away from a tier-two LLU carrier. There is not a single line in the country for which Claranet is compulsory, the default choice or in any way anything other than an active choice. They don't even advertise much, so you have to seek their services out (indeed, I'm slightly surprised to learn they haven't been bought by one of the bigger players).

While I appreciate the nice reference, it's not nearly the same. It's a Service provider, which I know is easily confused with a back end provider but not nearly the same thing. Hell, you could easily set up your own business doing the same thing. Create a proxy and allow links to Big Bang theory, Atheism and while disallowing links to Creationist theory.. and call it "idontbelieve.com", I'm sure you would get subscribers.

A word of warning: Someone in the US probably has a patent on the idea so you may

I just moved and kicked Comcast to the curb. They called me up every day until I turned my cable modem in and wailed and wringed their hands and tore their hair out trying to get me to transfer service. No matter what they'd say, I could retort, "Getting FIOS: twice the speed for half the price." Then they'd try again to tell me what a mistake I was making by cancelling my established relationship for that "experimental" fiber optic technology. "Twice the speed for half the price," came my rebuttal. They ne

If a US company started (and they have by the way) which has a set of rules you don't like you change ISP companies right?

It isn't unusual in the US for there to be one practical option for reasonably priced broadband, the cable company at around 10mbs. That runs about $65 a month after taxes in my area. There might be a second option if you are lucky enough to be in one of the few Verizon FiOS or AT&T Uverse areas (though they are pricier), or one of the few municipal high speed service areas that have

This is not a company like Comcast or AOL. I intentionally gave examples of similar companies in the US. I used to pay a lot more attention to these companies when my kid was younger, but he's been old enough to see boobies for a while now.

Picture paying for Comcast, then paying Cyber Sitter for services. You get a setup from Cyber Sitter which points you to _their_ proxy and mail services. Their software filters and sends you data over Comcast's lines. Comcast is not impacted at all by your relationsh

I didn't bother to look up this company in Britain to see if it was a true ISP, or a proxying service, or etc. I was just pointing out it may be fine in Britain to have some true ISPs doing this, where from my understanding (at least in metropolitan areas) there are plenty of high speed ISP options. But here in the USA we don't have that luxury. I'd never want to allow any of our ISPs to do it carte blanche to their subscribers without it being an opt-in service, or a separate proxying company as you point

Sorry, but why does everyone equate the term ISP to be a back end mandatory service? I know we in the tech industry tend not to use them, but did we suddenly forget they exist? Read upward for links on US companies that are similar, they are used pretty often in schools in the US.

If you read much of what I post, I'm about as pro constitution as you will find. This company appears not to be an issue, and what they are doing appears a non issue. I can't say definitively since I'm not in the UK and have no

If you read much of what I post, I'm about as pro constitution as you will find. This company appears not to be an issue, and what they are doing appears a non issue.

It doesn't have to be unconstitutional to be harmful. Communications providers should be blind to the content they transfer. Suppose the USPS wanted to implement parental controls of the mail. Would that not disturb you? The same thing goes for ISPs.

Let me ask a question: Suppose a company opens that delivers packages and ensures that what they ship is up to all state and federal agriculture laws. You can pay them, or not, to ship your produce from Farmer John's to you. Is this illegal and immoral? What if Farmer John said "We are going to start using this company, and we know it'll cost you extra but we trust them." Is that illegal and immoral?

It becomes an issue when it's forced on everyone to use that company and pay the extra fees right? In t

Just one more quick point. "It doesn't have to be unconstitutional to be harmful." I can't agree with that statement at least in the USA regarding US laws. The constitution is the rule of law, which would include the Bill of Rights. As is true in all Republics, all additional laws must be aligned with the Constitution.

Example: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. From that we can extract that Murder is illegal since it interferes with all of the fore mentioned.

Did you read the article? Shame on you if you have not. Listing ISP companies in the UK I find at least as many as we have in the US. Like AOL of old these companies use a different front end service that they control and larger ISP back ends. Maybe you have never heard of a HTTP Proxy, but in essence that is what this is.It's a voluntary service that they pay for, and a front end service at that. They mimic a different company that has been around for a while now called "TalkTalk" and add additional r

Wrong! It's more like changing the story from Claranet to "AOL" or "NetZero" or some such. From the article, it's not a back end provider. It's an additional services provider.

Your cookie example is horrible. It's more like having an optional pay-for valet service at a restaurant. If the company providing valet services says "Due to potential health risks to our employees we will not park smokers cars.". Seeing that sign do you get hysterical and claim they should not be allowed to operate and try to d

As someone who was raised by and around lots of Catholics (and, FTR, never buggered), I can tell you with confidence that individual followers of the Catholic faith, for the most part, don't give 2 shits what you do with your life.

But if you are a member of a religious group and you like the idea that your priest/imam/rabbi/sith-lord will be shielding you from reality then why should you not be able to outsource your filtering ?I filter the internet from my children (by watching over them as they use it) according to my social mores, and if I were to choose to use a filtering program I'd like to know broadly what criteria were chosen for what gets through and what does not. If someone wants to make a little money by applying the terms kosher or halal to web content, and it's done by a practitioner you trust then people should have that option just as the unfiltered option should exist.

Reminds me when I was at school, one teacher had one student write down students names when they interrupted class.One kid tried not to write names down and got detention. When it was my turn, I wrote down the names she mentioned, just like she asked. I also wrote down all the names she did NOT mention.

The ISP wanted to offer parental controls (You know, offering something like Dans Guardian as a service), they are trying to make their product useful, so they are asking a bunch of different groups, for feedback.

Religious groups, were invited, they didn't barge in. When you are making a tool for parental controls, you need a good diversity of ideas so you can make good decisions.

For many of us, wether or not we follow something is of little relevance to our opinion on the subject.

Many of us hate religion because, frankly, it's a psychosis induced by our fear of the unknown, exploited by the wealthy and the power-seekers. The indoctrinated occasionally become immune to logic and reason, and present a huge problem to the rest of us living in the 21st century.

For those about to mod me down as flamebate: this is how I, and many here actually feel, and our frustration is not without considerable merit. Just look at the damage that's being done to the education system. Or sexual identity. Or genetic research. Or the climate. Or women and girls in Islamic societies.

"Religion" is a bigger scope than my post. Naturally, you'd want some evidence of its veracity. Well, actually you absolutely do not want to actually receive evidence at the same time you're stating you want evidence, and likely per standard practice whatever evidence you're given you'll simply assert it isn't enough, and conflate "evidence" to mean "proof", such that before you'll make a decision on the topic, you demand a degree of proof so overwhelming it would force your assent, and you'd have no ch

If you prefer not to refer to her summarization, though, the entirety of Western Philosophy will note that simply dismissing an argument as "psychosis" or, going back to the first parrot in the chain, a "delusion" is merely a thinly-veiled Ad Hominem. Likewise, the field of history will agree that to argue that, via one religion or the other, virtually the entirety of humanity for thousands of years B.C. to, say, around the year 1800, was in a state of "psychosis" is meaningles

A Pedophile is a person who had done an action. A religion is a group of people with a belief. Often Pedophiles are people with a mental illness, they don't do it because they think it is the right thing to do, but because there is something wrong with them.

Actually if you want to help your filter even better you should actually recruit Pedophiles (Who have the problem, but want to help block the damage) to help find ways to block sites.

This is just fine if they also allow atheist groups to add items to the filter too. Given the amount of violence and sex in the bible, it would make just as much sense to censor the bible as anything else.

Don't forget the Qur'an, Hadith, Sira and so on. I wouldn't exactly say those are devoid of hate speech. If you're going to argue the Bible should be blacklisted, blacklist the really harmful shit as well. It's like criminalizing pot while leaving heroin legal.

Ultimately it's the same type of religious hatred you are demonstrating that changes the world, not religion itself.

I don't follow an organised religion but I'm still an honest, law-abiding citizen that has respect for those around me. If some of those around me need organised religion to get themselves to the same point, I don't see a problem with that, whatever works.

I'd want the option to filter content based on my own beliefs and opinions by NOT GOING to the sites that I find objectionable.

What method of "NOT GOING" did you have in mind? If you mean just not keying in the URLs of objectionable sites, what should you do if someone cites a document in support of his argument, but when you click the link to view the document, it ends up being a shock site [wikipedia.org]?

don't click on a link going there (assuming the link is not masked/hidden).

That's exactly what I was referring to: links that are masked/hidden. And on a browser for a tablet, which has no gesture to show the target URL in a status bar, pretty much all links are masked/hidden.

But filters are like virus definitions.. only as good as your last update.

Microsoft at least seems to think "as good as your last update" is good enough, seeing how strongly Windows Security Center recommends installing a real-time antivirus.

If I name a porn site 'Puppiesandkittens.com' and don't use any 'bad words' in the content I'm pretty sure it will defeat the filters.

For a short time, until other subscribers to your filter click "Report this site" enough.

We need controls to prevent kids from overdosing on religion. There's a maximum safe dose of religion, maybe around an hour a day. Kids who substantially exceed that dose may turn into cult members, Jesus freaks, non-working yeshiva students, or Islamic militants. It's not the brand of religion that matters as much as the dosage.

see, even here we disagree; I think that zero hours a day is about right for religious indoctrination.

its child abuse, plain and simple. it creates stupid non-thinking adults who continue the disease.

the fact that 'we have been doing it this way a long time' does not justify the continuation of indoctration of youth. not when it takes SO much effort to retrain the individual, later on, in non-mythlogical, rational thinking.

I give no honor to religion. its brain damage and it should be stopped. I know fu

So by your logic bad cops make all cops bad, bad politicians make all politicians bad, bad bosses make all bosses bad, bad employees make all employees bad, bad parents make all parents bad, bad sports figures make all sports figures bad, bad actors and actresses make all of them bad, etc... Do you see where your logic is flawed and you are using a very simple hasty generalization fallacy to back your opinion? Probably not, but you seem to know what bias and bigotry are.

I thought religious folk were just interested in doing good.. you mean they'll only donate to charities that give the help with strings attached? Like food handouts - after the sermon?

Tch. Doesn't seem very "love thy brother" to me.

You can have community and common ground without religion ; we've just forgotten a lot of the ways how, because religion worked so hard to stamp everything else out - the stigma and shame of not attending church on a Sunday in some communities being the least of it. And capitalis

Of the "this book was written a long time ago by some goat herders and has some pretty wild ideas about magic sky fairies and superman zombies and other strange things but it tells us a lot about our culture and history" variety, you can eat as much as you like.It's the "this is how the universe works and don't you ever dare question it or yer lawd Jaaaaaaaysus Chriiiiiist will smite thine ass" that has a very low (mental) LD50 in children.

We need controls to prevent kids from overdosing on religion. There's a maximum safe dose of religion, maybe around an hour a day. Kids who substantially exceed that dose may turn into cult members, Jesus freaks, non-working yeshiva students, or Islamic militants. It's not the brand of religion that matters as much as the dosage.

You want to control and size religion to avoid overdosing? It's fairly simple. We need to start treating all forms of religion appropriately. They are a business, so get rid of the damn tax breaks. Not only would you likely cleanse religion of the false prophets (they would somehow find a reason not to practice anymore, go figure), but the tax revenue would be massive. Probably enough to kick-start the economy again instead of people praying for it to turn around by putting money into a silver platter and making false prophets obscenely rich.

Because with the increase in tax revenues over the last 20 years we have solved a majority of our issues with the economy? Wow, and someone says this is the best post ever? I'm sure you two could get a room together and have a great time patting each other on the back for your great ideas, but most of us are not so easily fooled.

Religion spends more money on charity than any private institution, period. You can read their financial books, because as tax exempt they are available to everyone for review.

This was initially a discussion on how to curb the excess of religious abuse under the guise of tax shelters. I certainly never attempted to make any claim that we had no false prophets in our government. Then again, it was our own people that made him a damn "prophet" to begin with, and I'm not about to recognize mass ignorance. Intelligent voters knew better, and recognize the limitations of any man in that position, regardless of charismatic aura.

I agree very much with your point regarding the Vatican, but would like to point out that any Catholic Church in the US can be audited. You can see what is being sent to the Vatican by each Church because it must be listed on their books.

I will admit that the above is over simplified. The way the Catholic Church is set up, they have a lot of pools for money so it's going to be a bit more complex to track. The little I know about how it works, local Churches send to regional offices, central offices, Stat

It's not just religious groups, it's several different organization types. Singling out religious groups in the title is merely inflammatory and designed to ignite a flamewar. While I think what this ISP is doing is wrong, I also feel it wrong for Slashdot to engage in the same zealous behavior against a certain group.

So now we can have a filtered ISP for the weirdy religious types, and they can stick to that and leave the other ISPs alone for normal people.

It also means that detecting people who spend a worrying amount of time looking at the wikipedia pages for explosives, ebay auctions for chemical equipment and downloading illegal copies of the talmud can be spotted and chucked into Broadmoor before they hurt someone.

A private company offers an opt in filtering service, and they hire religious people to help them set up that service. Okay, sounds like something I absolutely do not want. But who am I to tell other people they can't have it. It's not bothering me any.

Which is fine if they limit themselves to themselves. I'd hate to have my whole neighborhood burned to the ground, the women raped the men decapitated the children enslaved all in the name of religious tolerance because some nutjobs happened to see some porn or worse, something Jewish.

Well, I am not very religious, not fundie and I very strongly believe in evolution and science. Having said that, the only objection I have about the fundies is their attempt to grab tax dollars, or use tax money to fund their views and their sense of entitlement to the use of public property while denying the same level of access to the minority religions and atheists.

Here, as long as tax dollars are not used to support the ISP and if it is not a government sanctioned utility, I don't see anything wrong

Is it illegal in the UK for a private company (without any government funds) to mix religion with its business? It is illegal in USA? If there is no public resources involved, there is no standing for others to sue them.

On the other hand, others do have the freedom of expression to disparage the idea and the company. Again not using public funds or resources.

Is it illegal in the UK for a private company (without any government funds) to mix religion with its business? It is illegal in USA? If there is no public resources involved, there is no standing for others to sue them.

On the other hand, others do have the freedom of expression to disparage the idea and the company. Again not using public funds or resources.

If a private company provides a service that their customers can explicitly opt into which allows those customers to prevent their computer from visiting certain websites, then that is their right. It's the "explicit opt in" which is the important part; it makes whether or not the government is involved irrelevant. Nobody has the right to force anyone to go to any particular website (much to the enormous disgust of the whole marketing profession). Yes, I deplore the fact that some feel it necessary to try t

Indeed, Tony Blair concealed his religious leanings quite assiduously while in office, sometimes with the intervention of his director of Communications. In the UK, someone who openly made state decisions based on religious reasoning would be ridiculed in the popular satirical comedy press, and probably regarded as being "a bit barmy" by everyone else.

The difference between censorship committees and regular people is that the censorship committees want to watch and read their smut in a group setting rather than at home alone. It's rather kinky when you think about it that way.

Here's a good idea that will be only implemented after thoughtful, contemplative consideration of all its implications and effects are throughly explored with invitations to discussions for all affected parties extended I'm sure.

Hi everybody,
My name’s Alan Tavernor and I am Sales and Marketing Manager for Claranet Soho which is the division of Claranet that has just released the Childsafe product that is being discussed.
I just wanted to clarify that the product we have created is about the free choice of parents to choose what their children can access online rather than to subscribe to any particular view ourselves. It has been designed to allow parents to easily protect their children whatever their knowledge level of the internet themselves.
They can do this by either allowing or banning any one of 140 categories that exist for over 6 billion webpages on the internet. The option is there for parents to either choose their own selection or to choose the recommendations that are made by something called a Claranet Guardian. Claranet Guardians could be any one of a number of different people ranging from everyday parents, to education authorities, to relevant high profile people and to religious people. It’s worth noting that the religious angle is to cover the section of people in society who are religious and would find this beneficial rather than as a blanket for all. It’s really about increasing the level of choice for parents.
The Childsafe service is an option available to any of our consumer Broadband subscribers but is not mandatory and is something that a customer can select to have when signing up for a service.
I hope that clarifies everything but if anyone has any questions then please feel free to email me directly to alan.tavernor@uk.clara.net.
Kind Regards,
Alan

That should be, they have home customers needing this? This is almost pointless news, claranet moved away from being a home customer broadband provider years ago. I was a customer for many years and the tech guys were awesome. They would know what you were asking them and I rarely had any problems. The business changed their focus towards business customers and drove a lot of existing customers away with their policies. Just look at their homepage and find the consumer broadband. Even then on the page for h